Democrat Xp Lee wins race to succeed Melissa Hortman, restoring Minnesota House tie www.mprnews.org/story/2025/0… #uspolitics #minnesota
— fiberwoman15.bsky.social (@fiberwoman15.bsky.social) September 17, 2025 at 3:44 AM
===
BREAKING: Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate, says he’ll seek a third term as Minnesota’s governor.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) September 16, 2025 at 9:23 AM
===
The shape of politics in the US right now is increasingly that the media, political and economic elites are allied with the Trump regime against the actual people of the country who hate it
===
NEW: Attorney General Pam Bondi has now appeared to walk back comments promising to target broadly defined “hate speech” following the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, after facing significant backlash from both conservative and liberal circles over her threat to curb free speech.
— Politico (@politico.com) September 16, 2025 at 12:49 PM
===
according to an immigration attorney representing several arrested workers, ICE agents chose to arrest the Korean workers to fulfill the quota of 3,000 daily immigrant arrests set by Stephen Miller www.forbes.com/sites/stuart…
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 10:42 PM
===
> @cnbc.com ????
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 6:13 PM
On The Road – Captain C – Netherlands, September 2024 Part 9: Amsterdam Part 2
Baud
They’ve always been allied, but the alliance is increasing.
Baud
Thanks for the hard hitting journalism, politico!
Aziz, light!
Fascism never sleeps.
Baud
@Aziz, light!:
Liberalism enjoys its afternoon naps!
MagdaInBlack
Over Chicago-land we have a lovely sliver of a moon and some very bright stars or planets. I should look up what they are.
ICE was busy out near my work yesterday, in Elgin, just up the road a couple miles. Apparently Ice Barbie was in town for the festivities.
chicagotribune.com/2025/09/16/elgin-man-immigration-blitz-chicago/
(might be a paywall, the trib is weird. sorry)
satby
Good morning! Loving that new poll for the felon. Other than that, I got nothing.
Baud
Baud
@satby:
Good morning.
satby
@Baud: This liberal certainly does.
Suzanne
Ya thought you were just there to follow rules and arrest the landscapers and bussers who you hate for no good reason. But instead you instigate a humiliating incident and anger our geopolitical ally! WHELP! Hoocoodanode.
syphonblue
It really is crazy how they own all the levers of power right now, including the media, but they can’t actually win people over once they have the power.
They can convince people to give them the power, but once they have it they can’t convince them it’s good.
It’d be nice if the people learned to stop giving them that power though.
Baud
@syphonblue:
It’s why US society works hard to keep the public’s attention on Democratic imperfections.
NotMax
Maybe Kim Jong Un could volunteer the (still unfinished and vacant after 40 years) Hotel of Doom in Pyongyang as a detention venue for ICE prisoners, putting them to work on the interior, Can jam an awful lot of people into a 100 story building.
//
Jeffro
Bouie: trump’s scammy economics are coming undone
(gift article)
you can see it happening, right before our eyes…the con man’s biggest scam is costing the country dearly…
NotMax
@syphonblue
“Nearly all people can stand adversity; if you want to test a person’s character, give them power.”
– Abraham Lincoln
.
“The government must be the trustee for the little man because no one else will be. The powerful can usually help themselves — and frequently do.”
– Adlai Stevenson
.
“People who are interested in power are not interested in people.”
– John Ward
.
When one has power, they don’t have a need for intelligence.
– Russian proverb
.
Gvg
One term for some fanatics used to be god-botherers. These isolationist, foreigner hating republicans that have power now got power by triggering most people’s unfortunate normal bigotry into giving them power, but they are really extreme and meant the most outlandish versions of what they campaigned on, so they are incapable of laying low or waiting or anything. The way they see it, they already waited and things got worse. They need to save the tiny part worth saving now or something. So they are acting. And they are really bothering people. Not just the silly immigrant citizens who assumed they were ok, but many of the pure white people who are bigots but want America to be powerful with Allies and wealthy without economic disruption, plus nice and polite. Not to mention excellent medical care and cancer research!
Maybe one of the reasons Trump lost the college educated white voters that republicans used to get isn’t just that he isn’t liberal enough, but that he can’t talk in complete sentences that make sense from one end to the other and journalism’s trying to sanewash that couldn’t disguise that from college educated voters. Also almost all college degrees require basic economics courses and high school education doesn’t.
p.a
Why are AOC, Crocket, and some others so admired? Because they can think on their feet and respond in real time.
Saw a vid of some tRumpturd senator going off in committee on how it’s teh left causing this violence with their “fascists, danger to democracy” rhetoric and… *crickets* (judging by cnn video)
Now I will say I’m 99% sure national Dems are smarter than me, but right there I knew my response would have been along the lines of “liberals have been smeared as communists, socialists, traitors SINCE THE FIRST RED SCARE IN 1919, and you dare claim we’re the cause of this. We don’t post videos shooting coutouts of a Black President. Our presidents don’t spout “I can do whatever I want” crap” etc etc.
These people are lawyers? They’re trained in argument? (I know not all lawyers are courtroom lawyers.)
Geminid
This morning’s Politico Playbook tells me that ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez will testify this morning before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee chaired by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy. Deborah Houry will also testify. Houry was the CDC’s chief medical officer until she resigned a few minutes after Monarez was fired. The hearing will kick off at 10 a.m.
And in London today, Trump will be treated to all kinds of pomp and ceremony at Windsor Castle. He’s also supposed to give an interview to Fox News’ Martha McCallum that’s scheduled to air at 3 p.m; likely some slow-pitch softball.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
satby
@p.a: not being courtroom lawyers is no excuse, they’re trained to view all sides of potentially adversarial situations because to be effective you have to anticipate and be prepared to counter your adversary’s position. So they should have already been prepared to counter this.
OTOH, even when they do effectively counter argue, national and local media don’t cover it. So then Democrats get bashed for being ineffectual and weak often while making the exact arguments the detractors say they aren’t doing. I give them credit for not just retiring and telling everyone to pound sand.
rikyrah
@MagdaInBlack:
She surfaces again…to participate in the hateful nonsense WITH THE WRONG PERSON.😠😠
Once again, will remind you that she was nowhere to be found during the South Korea debacle😠😠
Baud
@Geminid:
Trump will never get the Nobel Prize, but maybe the King can award him Prince Andrew’s Cross.
@satby:
There no excuse for not being a courtroom lawyer.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a: Don’t forget “Satanists”. I’ve heard that one too.
gene108
Since the media is run by wealthy white men, is anyone surprised they align with Republicans?
They have serious class, race, and sexism blinders that they refuse to acknowledge, and get angry when those get pointed out.
Another Scott
Congratulations to Lee in the MN special election. He won 61% to 39%. Pretty impressive! (Hortman won it by 63% to 37% in 2024.)
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
Nate Silver’s aggregate seemed to show Trump’s numbers basically flat or slightly improving after the drop in June, until just the past week or so… but it includes some really pro-Trump-leaning polls, including a ridiculous one sponsored by the Daily Mail that last had him at +8 at the beginning of September. But I don’t want to just discount what I don’t want to see. For what it’s worth, that YouGov one is basically the worst one for Trump that they’ve got, but it’s interesting that it seems to show a more consistent downward trend.
Baud
@gene108:
I think the surprise for me is how easily they manipulate libs who should know better by now.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Understandable. But we also know that the right isn’t credible and will disseminate false and misleading information.
So we have to get comfortable operating with an increasingly imperfect information environment.
They Call Me Noni
Just curious. How do you pronounce Xp?
gene108
Anybody else find it interesting that the ICE officials raiding the Hyundai factory did not know what activities were allowed under the business visa? Seems these goons, even the ones in management, have no training on what’s an actual immigration violation. They’re just to round up non-white people.
Baud
@They Call Me Noni:
Read it like initials.
Like JD Vance.
ETA or Windows XP
satby
@Baud: stone cold mic drop
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: In 2016 particularly, to a lesser extent in 2024, some of the election tracking polls we thought were dumb Republican-leaning ones were the accurate ones. That may not have been an indicator of reliability, just that their arbitrary biases happened to compensate for whatever sampling problems were biasing the big media polls toward the Democrats.
Baud
@satby:
Yeah, the next Democrat who politically benefits for defending Democrats will be the first (at least in living memory).
p.a.
US industry is certainly happy about that! Maybe more tRump donations will help!🙄
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m not a big poll person. It’s why I don’t get too excited about Trump’s low approvals. I’m happy to see them, but I take it with a grain of salt.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: That’s standard procedure for their raids–often they’ve got a specific person they’re going after, but then they just arrest everyone in the vicinity who seems foreign and not white. The US citizens usually get let go after a few days, everyone else gets publicly smeared as a narcoterrorist human-trafficking gangbanger.
Baud
@p.a.:
US industry will donate to Trump because Trump has harmoniously aligned white labor with corporate and financial interests.
Mai Naem mobile
Anybody watch Colbert last ngiht? I am wondering if he’s trying to get out of his contract early or he thinks he can get away with pushing the envelope more while Orange Boi is too busy being flattered in the UK. I’m betting Colbert and Kimmel are going to get the IRS proctological audits that McCabe and Comey got after getting fired.
Baud
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
When you’ve got Stephen Miller’s quotas to meet (good to see them mentioned here, but they’ve been public knowledge for months), you can’t be too picky. And if you actually know what the law is, you might be tempted to follow it rather than just round up everyone in sight who flunks the paper bag test. And then you don’t meet your quotas, and your ass is in trouble.
gene108
@Baud:
Considering how well they manipulate themselves into pretending their blinders don’t exist, I’m not surprised others have trouble seeing the biases they bring to reporting.
Also, there’s a limited number of news outlets doing original reporting. We don’t having anything to replace the actual journalism from WaPo, NYT, etc. Given the angry reader comments on many of the articles, the subscribers are aware something’s not right, but there isn’t much in the way of alternatives.
Baud
@gene108:
Yes, especially for national and international needs.
Rightly or wrongly, investors don’t see a market for news that better aligns with people like us.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: Associated Press, unfiltered by a newspaper, is still a good source of national news and I follow a social-media feed from them. Outlets like ProPublica are doing some good journalism too. But the real gaps are in local reporting. My best hometown outlet is actually the website of a public-radio station.
All of these sources are to some degree donation-supported, so it’s worth considering funding them.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t care how uninformed they were. I want every minion prosecuted someday for crimes they did commit. This malfeasance will damage our country badly. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” has been our mantra for prosecuting stupid adolescents since forever. So let’s keep it as our mantra for guys getting signing bonuses for obviously bad behavior.
Use the minion prosecutions to take down the higher ups.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed on AP. And Reuters. ProPublica is very good but limited in scope.
There are some great local/regional papers out there, but many places don’t have one.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
Reuters is very good as well.
The StatesNewsroom is trying to fill the gap in more state and local coverage.
There are still very good news outlets out there, but people have to do the work to find them.
Vote your clicks and dollars!!
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
gene108
@p.a.:
There’s a certain “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” mindset in business, especially in anything involving sales, whether it’s acquiring a new client or new investments or maintaining a client relationship.
Businesses usually don’t engage in open bribery, but if you want to win a new client you take them to a nice sit down restaurant, and not the closet McDonald’s, for a business lunch. If you have a good customer you send them something nice around Christmas time.
Trump’s moved this culture into bribery territory, and businesses are happy to pay to play, as long as they can get taken care of.
different-church-lady
He’s finally united the country!
sab
@Baud: Cleveland Plain Dealer is a good regional paper ( NE Ohio). Not just Cleveland. Also NE Ohio suburbs, exurbs and cities south and west (Akron and Lorain.)
Columbus Dispatch used to be dreadful but then it got new owners. How is it now?
trnc
@gene108: What’s unfortunate is that NYT could use the Trump lawsuit to actually inform its audience on the Trump/Epstein relationship through discovery, but they’ll probably push to just have it thrown out.
I understand that getting frivolous lawsuits thrown out would typically be the goal, but NYT would probably regain subscribers if they took it as far as they could to gain newsworthy information. This is the thing that bugged the shit out of me about CBS caving; discovery could have shown in 10 seconds that most interviews were edited the same way that Kamala’s was, including Trump interviews.
Eric S.
@Baud: I coulda used another hour or two this morning. Stoopid Return To Office policy. Stoopider pants!
p.a.
@gene108: But they still need factual economic data to adapt to the market(s), and who can trust tRumpism for that? There are other sources, and in-house work, but the USG has been the clearest, largest source for all the numbers & trends.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: For me the takeaway from that graph showing the net approval rating is: goddamn, our voters really fucking suck. Obama and Biden were both excellent Presidents and yet voter opinions of them (in the dashed—lines) followed the same basic arc as they do for Trump. Two of the best Presidents of my lifetime and their reward/perception is only slightly better than the absolute worst monster I’ve ever seen. Being a Democrat is a thankless job.
sab
@trnc: NYT is a real estate empire that happens to own a paper, and that possibly has some shady investors. They don’t need more subscribers. Their paper is a side business.
trnc
Real and imagined.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin:
True for over a decade in Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti. That station has been subjected to sequential budget constriction that has squeezed out much of the (award-winning) local cultural programming they once had, but they’re determined to keep the local news as strong as they can.
Deputinize America
Clearly, someone made the decision to commit the crime of the Hyundai raid and to follow it up with deliberate cruelty in detention.
I want names. Domestic partners know, and could be set up for life if they give up the details of how their shitbag white supremacist husbands came home bragging about it.
Matt McIrvin
@Mai Naem mobile: The big thing now seems to be to go after political enemies for “mortgage fraud”, regardless of evidence.
sab
@UncleEbeneezer: You live in California, whose voters for some obscure reason completely ignore local politics. My RWNJ brother is on a city council in Marin County and I doubt that anyone knows his political affiliation or his appaling politcs. He does care about sensible local government.
I live in a state ( Ohio) where local and regional politics matter a lot. So we make different choices.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Pretty much every President has a “honeymoon” period when they enter office, after which approval declines. That’s a pattern going back as far as these things have been polled.
But approval used to vary over a wider range than this. Starting with Obama, everyone’s been confined to a narrow band determined by rock-hard partisan loyalties.
geg6
@sab:
The Philadelphia Inquirer is an excellent newspaper,
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
There’s a McDonald’s that’s still in the closet? I thought they’d all been proudly flying their Golden Arches flags for decades!
(Yeah, I know, typos, but when it’s all teed up and everything… ;-)
sab
@prostratedragon: Our two local public radio stations (in Cleveland and Kent ( that Kent of the shooting notoriety)) merged into one station and then allied with a local classical music station. In their merger they shut down the Kent station but kept all the Kent reporters. It worked out beautifully from a listeners standpoint. One general news station and one classical music station. I think they are also tied to the local PBS tv. I hope their finances are sound, and I contribute what I can.)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Have you noticed the howls of protests and defensive comments on this liberal blog whenever I point to the fact that white women have voted R with one exception in Presidential years since the Civil Rights legislation passed.
White people make 71 percent of the population, alienating them is not good business strategy. So truths that the majority/default demographic finds inconvenient will be always hard to speak
It is far easier to ramble on about minorities, Hispanic people (11 percent) and even billionaires than address the 800 pound gorilla of white supremacy/fragility for our news media.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
Oh, I totally agree! I was just explaining things from the (presumed) ICE point of view.
AM in NC
@sab: 100% this. I want them ALL investigated and, where sufficient evidence exists, prosecuted for EVERY crime they committed. The right-wingers in power and their lickspittle minions have shown us over and over again that the only thing they understand and respond to is applied POWER. Not reason, not law, not morality – POWER.
Not only will it serve as a practical check to get lawbreakers off our streets, it will hopefully serve as deterrent to future rightwing fascist criminals, AND it may show the rest of he world that we are returning to some sense of sanity after losing our fucking minds for over a decade.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: White libs.
White people tend to support white supremacy.
The rest of us know better.
AM in NC
@schrodingers_cat: I haven’t really noticed that as a popular sentiment here. I think most people here fully acknowledge and absolutely lament the fact that white men AND white women have voted for Trump/rightwingers.
After Dobbs, I think there was hope that white women would shift allegiance, but when that didn’t happen, there wasn’t a large-scale denial of white women voting patterns.
UncleEbeneezer
@sab: Not anymore. We moved to Taos, NM in January after the Eaton Fire destroyed our home and city. I haven’t really started paying any serious attention to local/state/city politics yet since I’ve been trying to manage a new job, new home, new friends, as well as the trauma/loss and PTSD from the fire. Eventually I will, but I’ve had to dial back my political focus for the sake of my own mental health for the time being. I was very focussed on local politics in CA since I was involved in activism, but most people pay very little attention to it, in general. My guess is that people in OH are only slightly more attentive to local politics as they are in CA. Most people in the US can’t name their House Representative and I’m guessing that holds just as much for OH as it does for CA. We who hang out here are not the norm, in this regard.
schrodingers_cat
@AM in NC: I have had direct replies to me accusing me of being racist for pointing out these statistics in the Balloon Juice comment section.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I can tell you the Canton Repository is absolutely horrid.
I subscribed to the paper edition for a while (we need good local reporting, no?) but I came to realize they were Trumpist bootlickers.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: That’s precisely what they did at that nutrition bar company in NY — they show up with a warrant alleging they’re after some nefarious criminal so they can get into the facility and then they just nab everyone who looks Latino.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
And the last time we beat the fascists, we didn’t accept “I was only following orders” as an excuse either. You commit crimes against people, you should go to prison for it. Every last prison guard at these ICE holding pens should find themselves on the other side of the bars someday, because if they don’t know their treatment of their captives is beyond the pale, that should be made into their problem.
And yeah, start with the minions and go up the line, until we see ICE Barbie in chains.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Speaking for myself here, the hard part can often be coming to the awareness that that’s what you’re doing.
vigilhorn
@Geminid: They’ve promised him a pony ride, too.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: I originally typed, “even when they have no idea that’s what they’re doing.”
That gets back into being mindful and examining ones own un- and sub- conscious beliefs and decisions; and white people simply have had no reason to ever DO that.
Chief Oshkosh
@gene108: From Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent Letter:
“Meanwhile, Stuart Anderson reported in Forbes that the officials who launched the raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia, which has caused an uproar in South Korea after U.S. officials arrested more than 300 Korean workers, had a warrant to look for four people from Mexico. According to Anderson, once the officials were there, they decided to meet the quotas established by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller by arresting South Koreans.”
Professor Bigfoot
@Chief Oshkosh: Sooo… they set off an international incident purely out of being lazy and stupid?
Damn.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: What could possibly go rwong?
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Planets? Here’s a song.
Fuck ICE! And does that Nazi trash have her pit crew with her for her face?
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin:
My best hometown news outlet is one guy who started a website just to cover our town. He kept at it, and is now making a living, of sorts, from it. He does most of the writing and the work behind that, but he has a lot of input from long-time community activists and many retired government (township and county) workers, included former electeds. It’s my family’s go-to site for very, very local issues and events.
Of course, my town is extremely liberal.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: The pattern when they actually prosecuted abuses during the Bush years was to start with the minions and… end there.
Telsiree
RE: the Dem on Dem shut-down-the-government fight, I’m so depressed.
Either Schumer and Jefferies extend the Trump Regime with healthcare subs, OR…
…they shut down the government! And that makes things magically better, right?
Wrong! The Supreme Court invests into Trump God-Emperor Emergency Powers, because every time Democrats exercise any power that they have, it is a mortal sin in American politics and that must be punished by the Opus Dei.
Looking back on 2024, instead of exploiting the genocide Israel was committing, Dems reflexively supported it, hoping the Blob would bless them. The Blob did not.
If the Democratic party wants to survive, it must have a position on Israeli war crimes. This lead from behind shit has to stop.
Scout211
I posted this last night but will repost it here for the morning crew:
Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause
(web archive version)
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay on Charlie Kirk, the media class, right wing violent rhetoric and racism in America today.
Worth a read.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t suppose the Millers even want to travel overseas, but I do want them to at least be homebound, and wary on itnernational arrest. Local arrest would be preferred but let’s not get out over our
Librettist
@Geminid:
Taking the over on the jet lag and sun-downing for a brain goulash generated media mess.
Jeffg166
Pam Bondi has the deadest eyes. It’s like looking into the void looking into them.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I won’t say ‘no’ reason, but all too few quite honestly. When you get the breaks because they’re built in, you don’t even see them, and you don’t realize that you’re benefiting from advantages that are yours as a class, and you don’t see that others outside that class don’t have them, and you blame on them their inability to succeed the way you and your friends do.
Been there. Done that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@trnc: I’d love to see them counter sue for defamation.
jlowe
@gene108: It’s probably too simple an explanation. The entire media elite in the US has rotted clear through from the ownership, through all levels of management down to how journalists are educated these days. The news media elites are the idea police, channeling discourse away from deviant ideas and ridiculing those speakers advancing the ideas.
Deputinize America
@schrodingers_cat:
The “I am Woman, hear me roar” demographic has sure as shit been roaring very loudly.
You don’t get Emmett Till without worrying hard about the sensitive, frail nature of the flower of civilization which is exemplified by white women and their fetish for “good schools” for their “good kids” to go to.
Its for the children, doncha know.
Soprano2
That’s because of the lies; they say they’re going to do one thing, then they do a bunch of other things. Plus, people hear what they want to hear. They were mad about Covid restrictions and inflation, and they associated them with Democrats, so they voted for Republicans. Plus, there really is a bias in the population for Republicans being more fiscally responsible, even though all the evidence shows they aren’t.
schrodingers_cat
@Deputinize America: Their allyship is conditional and their feminism is not inclusive, intersectional if you prefer to use the academic jargon.
Before someone jumps on my throat. Yes there are exceptions. #notallwomen, we are talking about statistical majorities here.
Soprano2
@Mai Naem mobile: I think he just doesn’t care about what FFOTUS thinks, and figures he’s already fired so what else are they going to do to him?
Soprano2
@Chief Oshkosh: This is the problem with quotas, they start driving all the decisions, and often cause people to make bad ones.
Princess
@lowtechcyclist: I have bad news for you. I as just in Austria and we absolutely DID accept “I was just following orders.” Only the very top top people were ever punished in a lasting way. The rest, card carrying part members who assisted the regiment, had to sit out the first election post war. That’s it.
p.a.
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, their perception is the benefits of whiteness > the benefits of feminism. Or maybe > inclusive feminism. As we slouch towards Gilead, maybe the equation changes.
p.a.
@Princess: Well we had a cold war to win. Not sure I whether I should //s this or not.
jonas
@Another Scott: Wait, so after Hortman was assassinated by a right-wing nutjob, the R margin in the district *increased* by 2%?
That’s…kinda depressing. Maybe it was a turnout thing, but still.
Another Scott
@Princess: Ultimately, self government means that the government reflects the will of the people.
Yes, norms and laws and principles matter. But we can’t get too far ahead of what the voting population wants or is willing to accept. Even if the logic and science and everything holy says that what we want and need to do is correct.
It’s terribly frustrating, but the monsters always get a vote, also too.
What matters is keeping them out of power to the extent we can. Incremental progress by fits and starts is a lot better than burning everything down…
Yes, prosecutions are needed. The monsters will keep pushing until there are consequences. How far up, and down, the chain to go has to consider politics as well though.
[ /LT-Obvious ]
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@jonas: Special elections are always weird.
I take the result as being – the voters voted for continuity. They didn’t let the “weird, foreign” name make them stay home or vote for the pretty blonde white lady instead.
20 point margins are good, by whatever measure!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
satby
Jennifer Rubin, today: Talking Points Won’t Cut It.
Belafon
@Professor Bigfoot: Muslims in Michigan, Latinos in South Texas.
Yes, us whites will deserve to get crap for our voting patterns for a long time, but other groups went along as well this time. And lets not forget all of the people who couldn’t vote for a woman.
Jackie
@Deputinize America:
Tori Branum, a Republican candidate for Georgia’s 12th congressional district, has claimed responsibility for tipping off federal authorities that led to the immigration raid at Hyundai. Branun bragged about it and said she’d do it again.
Of course it took others to actually give the orders…
Scout211
In unsurprising news,
Trump officials pressuring federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against NY AG Letitia James: Sources
Made-up mortgage fraud, it’s the new scandal since sex scandals are so quaint now.
mrmoshpotato
Colbert is out for blood. He doesn’t give a fuck anymore.
I don’t think he’s trying to get out of his contract, and if they fired him before its up. he could probably sue the living shit out of CBS.
And he will live to see the day the orange shitstain finally fucking dies.
Belafon
@p.a: Most people really can’t think on their feet the way AOC and Crockett can. One of the other people who can do that really well is currently the President.
Ramalama
@schrodingers_cat: White women who’ve married POC (and voted Trump) must especially be called out. White privilege gauze seeming to protect only their people.
Belafon
@gene108: They had bonuses to earn.
Belafon
@Ramalama: I’m curious how many of those there are that didn’t vote the way their husband did. Probably in the ones.
Professor Bigfoot
@Telsiree: White people in America choose Republicans because they hate the Black and Jewish and female led Democrats.
White people have not voted in majority for Democrats since CRA64 and VRA65 pssed.
You seriously believew white people are going to be motivated by claims of genocide in a foreign country on the other side of the planet????
That’s very much like the white men who claim the neo-Confederate Republicans and the Black and Jewish and female led Democrats “are the same.”
JML
@jonas: Melissa Hortman had been the rep in that district for quite a while and was very well known. The new guy is a fine candidate, and will do a good job (I think/hope) but was never going to instantly have the same kind of name recognition. Factor in special election weirdness for turnout and a little baked in racism for the dude with the “funny” name, and I think this is actually a pretty good result for a suburban Twin Cities district.
If he keeps doing his constituent service and stays visible and engaged, he’ll have the districted locked down for the foreseeable future.
Ramalama
@gene108: I am 72% hoping that PM Mark Carney woo Hyundai to ‘move’ their factory to Canada.
Edit: probably won’t due to the Trump Taxes.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Mai Naem mobile:
He’s doing in a late night context, what South Park is doing: pushing the line and dare somebody to do something about it.
We just sat down and watched the first 4 episodes of South Park, we’d stopped watching years ago, just got out of the habit.
Holy shit, talk about over-the-top even by their historic standards. It’s clear they’re gonna keep doing this until something happens and if not, they’re a running pop-culture sore in the ass of P-Tape.
gene108
@Belafon:
Trump personally met with at least one Muslim mayor in Michigan and sent his daughter’s FIL, a Lebanese American man, to talk to the community.
The Biden and Harris campaigns did not do that level of outreach.
I read stories that Republicans were effectively using Spanish language social media to reach Hispanic voters. It’s not a space I’m on, but I assume the reports are true.
In short, the Trump campaign made an effort to reach out to every conceivable type of possible voter, and promised them whatever they wanted to hear.
Belafon
@schrodingers_cat:
I had so many arguments over the years with my mother, who remembers the fight for abortion and not being able to get a loan or a car without her father or husband, and I could not use her experience to argue why she should be able to understand what blacks are going through and arguing for. But you can’t get through someone who doesn’t want to learn.
I’m not exactly sure what event it was that finally broke through (though I think having gay grandchildren had a part), but she’s at least open to understanding more now.
p.a.
Again, and always: every accusation is a confession.
Belafon
@gene108: Yep, and Trump promised blacks all sorts of things all three elections.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gene108:
Dems don’t want to admit it but that’s a pretty good electoral strategy. Sure he lied thru his teeth about practically everything and what he did mean typically had the opposite consequences of what the targeted audience thought it would be but hey, a vote is a vote.
Ramalama
@Belafon: I know three personally who voted for Trump in 2016. I stopped talking politics with them (stopped talking with one completely) so am not sure about the latest election.
Belafon
@Belafon: And do you know how much I could benefit as a white man if I just stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb?
chemiclord
@lowtechcyclist: We tried that in 2020. It took too long, and the people here blamed us for not moving fast enough before we handed power back to the fascists.
Ramalama
@Belafon:
I recall during the 2016 run Trump doing the same thing to Teh Gays. “What have you got to lose?” I think he yelled out.
Belafon
@Ramalama: How did their husbands vote?
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The problem is the asymmetry. The people swayed from Democrats in this way aren’t reliable voters. On the other hand, every true Republican voter knows that the real goal of the Republican party is white supremacy.
Ramalama
@Belafon: They ran far away from us whenever we veered towards politics. No idea. I’ve been living in Canada for a long while now and don’t see them all that often, which means I hardly ever talk to them men.
UncleEbeneezer
Great essay overall, but I mean, are we all gonna just pretend that this statement is so far removed from Coates’ own views about Jews using their $ to have disproportionate influence on American/Global politics? Last Fall he ended a contentious interview by pointing out that Palestinians don’t have “bureau chiefs” at the major media outlets to spread their views (you know, unlike those (((Zionists))).
I don’t even think he meant to invoke one of the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theories (that Jews use their wealth control the world) but it did highlight the fact that he obviously spends little/no time actually listening to Jews on how to avoid such a verbal misstep. But it’s such an illustrative dichotomy:
when Charlie Kirk uses this antisemitic conspiracy theory/stereotype it is bad. So bad that Coates uses it as an example.
But when he himself uses the same antisemitic bullshit to accuse Israel of genocide, just saying “Zionists” instead of “Jews” then it’s just fine and even righteous. The notion of Jews using their wealth to spread Anti-White Racism is ridiculous. But when Coates, Angela Davis, Ibram X. Kendi and others argue that Zionists use their wealth to support White Supremacy, those statements are just fine and should even be taught in schools.
The irony is that Charlie Kirk’s misrepresentation of CRT/DEI/Intersectionality as some sort of looming threat of White Genocide, is no less ridiculous than Coates’ misrepresentation of Zionism as a global threat of Imperialism/Racism/Colonialism etc. But the Left will only criticize the former, not the latter.
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: Yep, both groups chasing white adjacency.
Arabs who don’t really want to be “ruled” by abeed, and Latinos who (like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) think of themselves as white.
It really is the same thing.
Baud
@Belafon:
@Professor Bigfoot:
I excuse no one. But we have to try to assemble a coalition from the existing pool of people. I’m uncertain whether it’s doable until we have a generation or two of new adults, but we unfortunately can’t do nothing in the interim.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Bingo. In the era of colonialism white supremacy, many a time had a nonwhite face.
Harrison Wesley
@Jackie: Wonder if her opponents will publicly credit her for blowing up relations with S Korea.
Deputinize America
@UncleEbeneezer:
I cooked up an alternate timeline yesterday of a better Israeli state, where FDR bucked the xenophobic predispositions of Protestant America and wound up with a much better world:
Peale
@gene108: Yep. The last time we had an advantage over the GOP in social media and outreach tech was in 2008. Its like 30 years of thinking “we need Hispanic Votes or we lose” and the Dems haven’t figured out the media strategy to reach them.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The election was lost by barely a percentage point. Why do you think we are hopelessly outnumbered?
schrodingers_cat
I just realized that we have no one with any kind of political capital stand up for the international system of trade and treaties that t2.0 is blowing up.
The tankies and MAGAs are both rabidly against it.
JML
BTW, Ann Rest, a long-time State Senator in MN and one of the people targeted for assassination, has announced her retirement after the next session. While Senator Rest has been serving for a long time and might have been ready to retire anyways, you have to assume that seeing a close political friends and ally in Melissa Hortman getting assassinated and another close colleague in her caucus getting shot and grievously wounded, while narrowly escaping the same fate herself impacted her decision.
It’s a significant loss, because Ann Rest was one of the really experienced legislators who really knew the legislative process and could see all of the impacts of possible legislation. But she’s certainly earned the right to step out. It’s deeply sad that fear of being killed might have impacted that decision.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
We were outnumbered in 2024. For us not to be outnumbered in 2028, we need to gain votes from somewhere by then.
The most promising source of votes are people who are unhappy with Trump’s economy, assuming it continues to slide over the next three years. But as we’ve seen, those votes tend to be fickle and temporary, especially if the economy isn’t made perfect almost instantly.
Aside from that, I haven’t yet seen evidence of a gain in votes, and a little bit of evidence of continued loss. Special election wins are nice, but we had good showings leading into 2024 too. VA and NJ this November will provide a lot of useful data.
Now I never said we were “hopelessly” outnumbered. I said I was uncertain, and I’ve explained the basis for my uncertainty.
They Call Me Noni
@Baud: thank you.
Belafon
@Baud: I’m not sure either when “They’re going to eat your faces” doesn’t seem to get through as a message, and throwing money around doesn’t sway anyone either.
Maybe I’m too comfortable as a white man to realize that voting for Democrats just because they best match my beliefs and preferences shouldn’t just be automatic. Maybe I should give in more to the urge of “Which party is telling me what they will do for me?” to understand people better.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: We do; but at the same time we cannot ignore the forces that move against our coalition and, consciously or unconsciously, are drawn to the defense of whiteness.
We would be fools to ignore the demographic realities of who is doing what.
chemiclord
I’ve never liked the argument of “Zionism = Colonialism” mostly because it requires stretching the definition of a “colony” in some pretty uncomfortable ways.
For example… let’s say (purely as a hypothetical) that the United States were to grant say… Pennsylvania to the descendants of the various Iroquois tribes. Would we call those people “colonists?” I sure hope not. That would be a pretty stupid thing to say.
Secondly (and this is a pretty significant reason why Israel is really fucking zealous about their “defense”), is that the Israeli people know damn well that if the Islamic zealots actually had the opportunity to push the Jews from the river into the sea, that absolutely no Western nation would welcome those displaced. The Jewish people know from experience, and from simple observation, that they are tolerated and “accepted” as “allies” solely on the condition that they remain “over there,” and not somewhere in Europe or North America.
The Palestinian people have a similar conundrum, in that they know damn well the Arab world only accepts them to the extent that they are willing to fight a proxy war with Israel on the Arab world’s behalf. October 7th happened to no small extent because Hamas saw Saudi and Israeli normalization as meaning that the usefulness of the Palestinian people in Saudi eyes would diminish, and their extermination order would be effectively signed. (They were probably right.)
This is the sort of world you get when every agency acts in bad faith.
Belafon
I will say, though, that the state Democratic party here in Texas sucks, and I think it’s more of a country club here than a party.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
We can’t ignore anything. The question is how to deal with it constructively, and in a way that doesn’t sacrifice self respect or our values. I don’t have a clue how we create a winning coalition with the people we have to work with, aside from hoping that the Republicans will be a disaster.
God bless the class warriors for at least having a theory, but they haven’t been able to successfully put it into practice in my lifetime.
Harrison Wesley
@Belafon: I hear the same thing about the party here in Florida, although I’ve also heard they’re genuinely trying to turn things around. Native Floridians would have a more accurate reading than me.
Baud
@Belafon:
I think state parties are our weakest link, even though the DNC gets all the attention.
satby
A little sideways to the general topic, but since we were talking about the resurgence of social justice theology under Pope Leo, I thought I’d point folks on Substack to this priest’s videos. Fr. David Gerlach could give lessons to a lot of Democratic politicians in message crafting. The link is to his post on Defunding Billionaires.
Chris T.
@Belafon:
First part true, second part contains a category error. The Orange Menace doesn’t think, he stimulus-responds, with a prepared distraction.
(post attempt #2, thanks to Redis database errors)
Belafon
@Baud: Class has the nice issue in this country that it’s mostly about white people hurting other white people.
Baud
Crime in Tennessee is out of control. In broad daylight.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: No you never said hopelessly, that’s the sense I got from your comments. Your comments since 2024 have sounded more pessimistic than before.
Nettoyeur
During Stalin’s bloody purges in the 1930s, there were arrest quotas handed down from the national to local levels. And sub quotas for executions, and various sentences to the Gulag. And throughout the Stalin period, people were encouraged or forced to denounce their neighbors for ill defined crimes or general disloyalty.
Anyway
These are people that chose public life – rarefied group – Reps and Senators. I have higher expectations of them than “most people”
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I was more optimistic when we had Biden/Harris in charge. I’m not going to ignore the reality of losing, especially losing the popular vote. Plus the loss in Congress, especially the Senate.
I don’t believe in predictions, especially long term ones. Anything can happen. But until the historical pattern breaks, it hasn’t broken.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: Well, it really isn’t, but that’s what people often *mean* when they emphasize “class”.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Got it!
Matt McIrvin
@Scout211: The Republican analysis of the Great Recession was that it happened because DEI forced banks to make home loans to unworthy black people who defrauded them. So of course their go-to accusation here as with Lisa Cook is going to be mortgage fraud. These are racially charged attacks.
Belafon
@Anyway: Yes, but sometimes, to paraphrase Hidden Figures, there are geniuses among the geniuses.
lowtechcyclist
@chemiclord:
Could you remind me of which cases against Trump even involved minions, and which minions were prosecuted? Who was the equivalent here of James McCord or Gordon Liddy?
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: Yep.
iKropoclast
Couldn’t be seen consorting with Muslims activists. Imagine the scandal.
Captain C
@NotMax: Try putting South Koreans there and that might start a war.
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
Who cares? There’s no equivalency between Kirk and Coates. Kirk was a major player on the right, and now everybody and their siblings know who he was, since his death is now a rallying cry for the entire right wing of American politics. Coates barely matters even on the left.
What’s important here about Coates is whether he’s quoting Kirk accurately, and whether his argument is clarifying. Those are true or not regardless of Coates’ own prejudices.
iKropoclast
Not over yet.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: He has seemed more resigned to me.
Still fighting the good fight, but honestly grappling with precisely what he speaks of– how the hell do we build a WINNING coalition, here, in the world we actually inhabit?
Wish to hell I had an answer for that; but all I have is more questions: why is it Jews and Black folks and LGBTQIA+ folks hear Dem messaging just fine, but straight white Christians seemingly cannot?
Captain C
@Geminid:
“Donald, we’ve decided to take you to the Tower of London instead for some, ah, traditional English traditions. We’ve restored this gold-plated ax just for you. Sir Chopper here will show you how it works, just lie down here…”
iKropoclast
The one built on outsourcing slavery? Trump’s complaints that Americans are the ones getting the short end of the stick here are ludicrous, but this is nothing to protect. When they’re done and international trade needs to be reestablished, we can make trade deals with solid standards for labor rights and the environment
jonas
WTF is that even supposed to mean? It’s just word salad.
Captain C
@gene108:
Interesting yes, surprising no. Their actual job seems to be meeting quotas of rounding up non-white people by any means necessary without regard to niceties like due process and following the law.
Captain C
@jonas: They’re snarl words designed to rile up and thus distract people who might otherwise eventually figure out they’re being robbed blind.
iKropoclast
When your country is ideologically opposed to so much as hearing you out…
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: What the hell is an Asian black bear (Chinese moon bear) doing in Garlinburg?
Captain C
@sab:
They’re also increasingly a game company. I wonder if they’ll figure out a way to add actual gambling to their offerings.
Will
Going to post this one more time since it seems no one read it.
The Hyundai plant raid was sparked by complaints over minorities fighting over minority contracts and hiring practices.
African Americans were upset that Asian Americans were winning most of the contracts and getting most of the jobs on top of Asians being brought in from South Korea to teach rather than hiring local experience.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-11/wealth-and-jobs-sparked-anger-before-ice-raid-at-hyundai-plan…
jonas
I believe they’re going after Adam Schiff with the same nonsense, but yeah, a lot of this is driven by the implicit assumption that if a Black person has something nice, they must have acquired it through theft/fraud.
With Trumpworld, of course, it’s simply classic projection.
ryk
@Will: Maybe no one read it because it’s paywalled
iKropoclast
@jonas: In Rightwinglandia they just use buzzwords. Meaning is not a thing. Things that may sound diametrically opposed are not, because all they really mean is “the enemy.”
Karen Gail
Just saw, then lost when page refreshed, best reel about gun control. Woman suggested that we treat male gun buyers like some states treat women who want abortions; best part was not the suggestion of anal prob but that states be allowed only one gun seller per state.
Deputinize America
@Baud:
I liked her authoritative stomp on the tailgate.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Well, 40% of us white people, give or take depending on the election, vote Democratic. Can’t tell you how many are cis, het, or identify as Christian. So somebody’s hearing the message among the melanin-impaired set.
Would be nice if that 40% was a bit larger, but how you expand that without throwing other parts of our coalition under the bus is the big question.
French Onion Soup
@Professor Bigfoot:
Plenty of us who vote for the Democratic party think it sucks and needs to die. It’s a radioactive shit sandwich and voting for it is degrading. The alternative is people who want to kill you.
laura
Well, well, well, who’d a guessed this would happen: nydailynews.com/2025/09/15/mamdani-declines-to-immediately-back-hochuls-reelection-after-she-offers-…
DSA continues to split the party they love to use, co-opt and shit mouth.
Kent
It would be trivially easy for them to win people over by actually doing good things. But this administration is ideologically opposed to that clearly.
Captain C
@Professor Bigfoot:
Very on brand for this administration.
schrodingers_cat
@laura: When they kick us in the teeth we are supposed to say, Sir can I have some more. Otherwise you are a neoliberal shill
Mamdani is bad news. Just like Senator Shrek he will be the albatross around our necks.
Belafon
@iKropoclast: Bwahahahaha. We won’t be in any position to enforce that. That would require us to regain the leverage we’ve lost. I’m afraid China will be controlling most of the negotiating.
Plus, your speech totally ignores that a lot of countries were willing to become our manufacturing hub because it was an improvement over what was going on in their countries.
Kent
Well, I mean, look at the kind of Black people that they associate with. Is it any wonder where they get that idea?
Candace Owens
Mark Robertson
Hershel Walker
Thomas Sowell
etc.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I think it’s also because they know that a lot of people they know do this, so they figure everyone does it, and it would be an easy thing to find proof of. They know these people haven’t actually committed any crimes, but FFOTUS has insisted they be charged with something, so it results in stupidity like this.
iKropoclast
@laura: Everything should be considered transactional, amirite?
This effort to put the focus on an election next year that doesn’t even have a full slate of candidates instead of an election in two months where the primary has already occurred, clear ratfucking
piratedan
gotta say its incredibly annoying at how adept our wannabe dictators are at sowing division and distraction in our ranks…
main focus, defeating these racist/fascist fucks
secondary focus, rebuilding the bridges that are needed to keep the coalition working and communicating
keeping receipts is necessary for discussion and dissection afterwards but right now, can we table the purity posse?
I do NOT doubt the people on this blog, or their lived reality, I just want to assure you that I am an ally and hope that in good conscience you will accept my help.
pretty much that’s where I am at.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@gene108: That doesn’t excuse their stupidity or make them look any better. They accepted the word of a known liar and cheat just because he was nice to them. And they do it repeatedly, even if they still suffer from the consequences of their past actions.
Kent
Nonsense.
Have you not learned by now that the right will just make up any shit they want about anyone and if they shout it enough people will believe it? Some DLC centrist type could get elected mayor of NYC and they would still make up endless amounts of shit about him/her and recycle it through FOX and the other mouthpiece organs.
Living in a defensive crouch and worrying about what the right is going to do is a loser’s game. What has Mamdani proposed? Public supermarkets? Free bus service? Slightly more robust rent control? The horror.
Of course Fetterman is a different issue. He has clearly lost it.
iKropoclast
Well, we could have pursued a more equitable trade policy years ago but everyone assured me that would be bad for business. Now we have Trump blindly shredding everything. It’s almost like all those years of insisting on trade policy that exploited workers in every nation involved but favored American capital enabled Trump’s rise.
Now if we can rebuild a trading regime based on more equitable standards, you say we can’t enforce it, but wouldn’t enforcement be…finding someone else to trade with.
Will
@Captain C: & @Professor Bigfoot:
Raid was sparked by racial issues between African Americans and Asian Americans. Lot of accusations over minority contracts, hiring practices, and use of foreign trainers.
iKropoclast
They ain’t sowing shit. Democrats refuse to hear each other out. You can see it here every day.
Peale
@laura: Oh, please don’t tell me this is another one of those “As NYC Mayor, I’m going to be gone most of the time running for governor or president or Senator”. Dude. This office is a springboard to nothing!
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve said that many times, but I don’t recall anyone howling or defending. The only time I got pushback was when I said that white women say they favor abortion rights, but they do not vote that way
@AM in NC:
I was saying the same thing about white women voters during the Bush/Cheney Junta – they supposedly supported them because Democrats were objectively pro terrorist. And I got a lot of shit for suggesting that Dobbs was not a game changer in federal elections.
iKropoclast
@Peale: Where did you get that from that article?
Shalimar
Are there any pictures of Trump hanging out with Prince Andrew? That has to suck for Donald’s ego if notorious child rapist Epstein was friends with royalty who want nothing to do with him.
Anyway
This was a good analysis. thank you.
schrodingers_cat
People who have zero background in macroecon or trade policy feel confident in bloviating about stuff they know little or nothing about. Just like the current President. Actually.
Timill
@Chief Oshkosh: Getting take-out, apparently.
iKropoclast
Is this more recognizably silly, now?
I don’t need to be an elite trained economist with a teaching position at Harvard to recognize that it is bad we are paying children a dollar a day in far flung places and strip mining the planet for resources all in the name of cheap disposable goods.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist:
*SOME* of us got trained to, I won’t say not be racist, but to keep our bigoted impulses under control to the extent that it’s not driving the vote. It’s hard and not fun and I frankly don’t expect the median white person to go for it (if I recall correctly, even the less racist attitudes in the young are mostly explained by them being less white, not by the whites getting any better).
Baud
@Will:
This statement is false. The article talks about tensions but doesn’t say the racial tensions “sparked” the raid or otherwise caused it. Free link below.
archive.ph/ELLNC
Kent
@chemiclord: Prior to the 20th Century the Levant under the Ottoman Empire was an incredibly rich multi-ethnic mix going back centuries under which Jews were a part along with Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Druze, etc. Populations are always moving and blending. That is the nature of the world in which we live in.
That is fundamentally different from actual colonialism like the British in India, the French in Indochina, or the Belgians in the Congo. Which was not about migrating populations and settlement. But about extraction and exploitation.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: You know Andrew would love to attend the state dinner! They could rehash the good ole days on the island. Wonder if those girls ever graduated from high school…
Paul in KY
@They Call Me Noni: ‘Zip’?
oldgold
Dr. Susan Monarez, the CDC director recently fired by Robert Kennedy Jr., is testifying before the Senate this morning. She has been an extraordinarily impressive witness and has eviscerated Kennedy with her testimony.
In a sane world Robert Kennedy Jr. would be fired or resign by the end of the day.
laura
@iKropoclast: Nope. The Democratic Party has had a progressive platform going back to The Roosevelt administration, and especially after the civil rights laws of the mid-sixties. DSA is an anti-democratic party organization. It’s a fucking parasite intended to internally disrupt and overtake the host party. They don’t cause one lick of trouble for Republicans, but they’ll barge in and disrupt a democratic candidate every chance they get. They distain women, non-whites, LGBTQ. They’ll gladly accept a token. Not one good thing comes from allowing this to continue.
prostratedragon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m reminded here of A. Lincoln, …
Will
@Baud: good catch, I re-read it. The part where someone had filed a complaint was unfortunately I guess just back and forth on Bloomberg radio when they were talking about the article. Can’t take back and forth conversation to be confirmation tho, otherwise I assume they would have put that in the print.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Solzhenitsyn said in Gulag Archipelago that the NKVD worked on quotas. Your guilt or innocence did not matter if they got you in some kind of sweep.
Melancholy Jaques
@Scout211:
I read that. I wish every member of the media would read it, but I know that even if they did, they’d still do whatever that asshole and their bosses told them to do.
Kent
@Baud: Yes, the headline is complete bullshit.
There is zero in the article to support the notion that ICE raids were sparked by Black American’s complaints. They just cite some local Black politicians who were disappointed that the Hyundai plant and other similar projects promoted by the state were being located in more prosperous predominantly white parts of Georgia rather thin their own poor and majority Black communities.
Which, you know. Maybe they have a point. Their state tax dollars are being used to subsidize economic development that goes to wealthier communities rather than their own.
That is a far cry from claiming that Black politicians in Georgia sparked these ICE raids. We already know that it was a white MAGA congressional candidate who sparked the raid and admitted to it. And that it was Stephen Miller’s jihad that made it into the fiasco that it was. As opposed to just some ICE bureaucrat showing up at the plant to check paperwork as should have happened if there were questions.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I would also suspect malicious compliance too. What ever the ICE admins opinions on immigration, they can’t be happy about Miller showing up and screaming at them about not doing their jobs.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@laura: Or maybe, just maybe, the New York State governor’s election is well over a year away and an endorsement of the nominee for New York mayor with the election three months away isn’t quite the same thing as an endorsement for a gubernatorial election that’s fourteen months from now, when we don’t even know who the candidates are going to be yet?
Will
@Kent: crazy you managed to work in the white people angle in an article about racial divisions between Asian Americans and African Americans.
This is why we are cooked. Have a great day people!
Melancholy Jaques
@Telsiree:
It’s the same questions I keep raising: Who are the Democrats? What do they stand for?
The point is, do Democrats agree with the things that asshole is doing or not? Do they oppose? Because if they don’t – if they don’t emphatically oppose – then why bother voting for Democrats?
As far as the support of Israel. There is a portion of the Democratic electorate & donor base for whom support of Israel is the one & only issue. And don’t @ me as anti-semitic. I can tell you as a person who was making calls to donors for Howard Dean when he said the US should be “even handed” in the Israeli Palestinian matter that there are people who normally donate & vote Democratic who absolutely will not do so if there is any wavering from full throated support of Israel. Go back & look at the only Democratic presidential candidate to get less than 50% of the Jewish vote: Jimmy Carter in 1976. His problem? The Camp David Accords which some viewed as betrayal.
Melancholy Jaques
@satby:
As recently as this morning I engaged – because I can be really stupid – with a person who insists the parties are basically the same. Two wheels on the same bicycle was the phrase.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist:
QFT.
The suck part is that ours is the party of civil rights, womens rights, human rights. Which means we CAN’T sacrifice the rights of ANYONE, otherwise, “what are we doing here, anyway?”
And if the only way to get more white votes IS to throw some hapless community to the wolves, well, we’re just fucked because we’ve read our Pastor Niemöller and we know that, whoever we are, they’ll get around to us, too.
BobbyK
The USSC has given trump the power to outright steal the next Presidential election. What is going to happen when he does it?
iKropoclast
@Matt McIrvin: Honestly, I don’t think I could ever find any genuine sense of community based on race. I have my mostly white family that I feel increasingly estranged from despite them still being very much in my life.
Then I have my friends. There I can find some sense of togetherness sometimes until inevitably at some point something presents itself to suggest to me I can never fully belong; a misunderstanding or maybe a funny look because of some phrasing I chose or my taste in music or even the expression on my face. Usually comes with an implicit “that’s ours.” Even who we trust/distrust as institutions differs, not in an unreconcilable way, but along trends that point to culture. And I can’t help but wonder if the good grace being afforded to me today might be retracted based on something I barely understand.
I don’t know what to do. I feel so isolated sometimes.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: Doesn’t work anyway, you lose more from the whole coalition than you gain because you’re now manifestly untrustworthy.
Old School
@Will:
Did you even read the article?
iKropoclast
@Baud: Or, hear me out, the white men and women who made the actual decision are the accountable parties and it is a well-established tactic for those people to deflect blame from themselves by pointing at the legitimate interests of the people they are hurting, group by group, and saying these are the threats to you.
Doesn’t have to convince everyone, just enough people so that not enough can stand against the opporessor.
Professor Bigfoot
@Will: So the blonde MAGAt lady had nothing to do with it?
schrodingers_cat
@Kent: I made up my mind based on Mamdani advocacy for voting uncommitted, and listening to his interviews.
Baud
I’m glad people are bringing up Melissa Hortman and the other people killed in the MN assassination (including the dog). But it’s a little disappointing that’s that’s only happening in response to righties rallying around Kirk, rather than from an organic movement.
The right has built a community that we haven’t (mostly because they represent the default demographics).
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud:
NonsenseLies spouted by an account I’ve never seen here before.Curious, eh?
Belafon
@Will: The raid was caused by a white woman running for office in Georgia. The arrests of the South Koreans was because ICE officials saw bonuses standing in front of them.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
He’s posted here before. Content similar to what he’s trying to do in this thread. It’s why I looked up the story. I usually don’t leave the boat.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: “Courtroom lawyer” is an ambiguous term. While in private practice, I was quite good at arguing in front of a judge and, had my career/personal track gone a bit differently, I could have made a good living at a firm with an appellate division. But I had exactly one trial in front of a jury and I absolutely hated the experience. Handling witnesses and making objections while trying to develop a rapport with the 12 randos on the jury? While also remembering not to use too many big words because half the country reads on the 6th grade level and resents hearing a fancy word they don’t understand? My anxiety is kicking in just from remembering it.
I used to joke that my dream job as a lawyer was to be one of the bad guys from The Pelican Brief who is name-dropped but never seen and who does nothing except sit in a law library all day, reading old opinions by SCOTUS justices and writing law memos that predict how they will vote in billion dollar cases going up on cert (for which he was one of the highest paid lawyers in the firm).
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: All this.
Bending the knee to straight white Christian male supremacy means that none of the rest of us who are not straight white Christian men will ever trust you again.
See also the reaction to some on “the left” mourning Reichführer Kirk’s unfortunate demise.
“We see you.”
iKropoclast
@laura: So…my understanding that you must be a registered Democrat to vote in a D primary in New York. So regardless of his other affiliations*, he won exclusively among registered Democrats.
Or am I missing something?
*I hear he was also in the Burger King Kid’s Club 😱😱😱😱
Baud
Not vouching for accuracy
Will
@Old School: The plant is in a predominantly white county…. So you are describing most of the United States.
I got news for you all. This need to inject white people into every issue and ignore everything else makes you not look like serious people to outside observers.
You will ignore a 1,000 words in an article about racial division between Asian Americans and Black Americans to focus on white people. You don’t bother to stop and think, wow, how could racial relations between African Americans and one of the fastest growing demographics in Georgia affect the turn of this red state from red, to purple, to possibly blue.
But hey, WHITE PEOPLE!
Belafon
@iKropoclast: I find it easier to deal with people when I don’t worry if they are looking for me to be racist. That doesn’t let me off the hook for making sure I’m not stupid, but carrying around a suspicion of others is still a suspicion of others.
On the other hand, I’m always worried that the white people around me are going to do racist stuff.
prostratedragon
@Captain C: The Tower tour guide in Gaslight described the method as a blow to the head, or in some unfortunate cases, two.
Omnes Omnibus
@Will: Things must be going really poorly for the GOP. Will is here to stir shit among Dems.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: To me, the big difference between Reconstruction and the post-WW2 era which explains how we got here is that, after we won WW2, we spent lavishly to rebuild our enemies’ economic infrastructure while destroying (sometimes by execution for war crimes) their prior socio-political structure. After the Civil War, on the other hand, we did the exact opposite: rehabilitating and preserving their antebellum socio-political structure as much as possible while allowing the whole region to be mired in Third World poverty for over 100 years.
When white conservative Southerners call us “communists” or whatever, remember that it’s really just code for “damned n*****-loving Yankees!”
iKropoclast
Lucky me, aside from my family they’ve all been gone… roughly 9 years. Read anything into that you want.
Will
@Omnes Omnibus: I came here to honestly see how many of you would tell yourselves lies about the shooter. Watching MAGAtards and leftists create their fictional worlds to live in is something I find fascinating to watch.
iKropoclast
@Will: The truth is we know very little about the shooter or their motives. What we do know is that the GOP was using the shooting to stir up violence against black and trans people before the shooter was even IDd. Some young man at university in Mississippi was just lynched (unless you believe the police).
Horrific.
p.a.
@Will: Yeah, the Koreans placed the plant where it is. Americans of Asian descent are a real force in Georgia politics.
Divide-and-conquer: WTF is that?
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: That is MAGA in a nutshell.
Professor Bigfoot
@Omnes Omnibus: The usual white supremacist shit at that.
SOMEHOW it’s ALWAYS gotta be the Negroes fault.
iKropoclast
@Professor Bigfoot: The race war isn’t going to start itself.
Deputinize America
@Belafon:
I live in a scarlet red pustule of an exurb outside of the vibrant blue city I work in, located in a red state. I presume that fellow white people around me – including family members – are going to say and do stupid racist things. Even I do it from time to time, and it comes out as an earnest paternalistic thing that I’m mostly successful at avoiding.
There’s a lot of nuance that I have to navigate, which includes my relationship with Jewish people in my profession, as I love the Reform and secular folks, but can’t stand the Conservative or Orthodox congregants.
Paul in KY
@Harrison Wesley: They fucking should!
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: As low as my opinion of the Trumpists was and is, I am still flabbergasted that they openly have a quota for “illegals” to round up and incarcerate. Before this is done there are going to be thousands of Americans who get rounded up and put into concentration camps in foreign countries just because they didn’t have proof of citizenship (whatever that even means after we abolish birthright citizenship) and pissed off the wrong government official.
Quotas for ICE is from the exact same mindset that led us to spend 40 years forcing teachers to “teach to the test” and then be surprised when half the country can’t read.
Ishiyama
@schrodingers_cat: Then I will drop a name, to credential myself – Stefan Riesenfeld, my International Law professor, if you are familiar with his work on international trade agreements, e.g. GATT.
I find your attitude refreshingly frank.
West of the Rockies
@Jeffg166:
Black, lifeless eyes… like looking into a doll’s eyes… until she opens her maw and you hear that awful rhetoric.
Kent
Did you actually read the fucking article?
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: The 10 cent ‘strategery’ to counter that would be ‘We like Whitey too!!!’.
It could be a lie, but what the Hell, TACO lied his ass off 100% of the time to everyone.
prostratedragon
Alternate pathways, housing edition.
WhatsMyNym
@p.a.:
They’re placing the battery plant there because the Hyundai plant is already there. Hyundai wants to expand their EV lines.
Also from the Bloomberg article –
Citizen Alan
@Belafon: I love Joe. And I love Kamala (who was actually my first choice b/f she dropped out in 2020. But I knew from the moment Joe picked her as his VP, he was literally betting the future of this nation and possibly the survival of our civilization and species on the hope that within 4 to 8 years, the majority of the American people would have matured enough to countenance voting for a black woman.
On a purely personal note, I fully believe at this point that the only way America will ever see a woman president is if a male president steps down for health reasons in favor of his female VP and she performs the job so flawlessly that a plurality of reflexive “I won’t vote for a woman” voters get over their misogyny.
p.a.
@prostratedragon: US of A: Boooooooooring! Where’s the insulting nicknames?
Paul in KY
@French Onion Soup: Fuck off on slagging my party!! Do please continue voting for our candidates, though.
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: Black folks looking at each other like, “why we in this?”
A white supremacist is murdered by another white supremacist and suddenly HBCUs start getting bomb threats?
Ishiyama
@Citizen Alan: Courtroom lawyer here. I got my skills in childhood, arguing with three older brothers at the dinner table.
Melancholy Jaques
@Citizen Alan:
My favorite part of law practice was what I was best at: research & writing. But I liked doing trials, bench or jury. The part I hated and was not good at was schmoozing clients.
You accurately describe the jury trial experience, but the bench trials can be horrible too. I’ve had judges who were not listening, judges who interrupted me to remind me that they had already made up their mind, would I please finish, judges who were friends with opposing counsel, addressed them by first name while calling me counsel.
Fair Economist
@laura: I don’t expect Democrats to blanket endorse all Democrats before the primary. I DO expect them to afterwards.
Mamdani can support whomever he wants for the NY Gov Dem nomination. If Hochul wins it, *then* it’s reasonable to insist he endorse.
Will
@Kent: Evidently more than you did since you missed the 1,000+ words on racial division between Asian Americans and African Americans to focus on white people.
Again, we are cooked thanks to your line of thinking.
iKropoclast
My Dad assured me Fox wasn’t pushing this blood libel. Then again, he’ll deny what we both heard them say not five seconds prior.
Never disputed that trans folk were a valid target for the coming
pogromscounter-terrorism actions.p.a.
@Fair Economist: Is anyone running vs Hochul? If not, I can kindasorta see holding off an endorsement a year ahead of time, especially by someone who may be an ally but not a member.
But we KNOW who’s running vs Mamdani and we KNOW what type of people they are, so holding off on endorsing him sends a very different message.
Anyway
I’m not sold on this — one-size doesn’t fit all. Why should we expect the same message to resonate with everybody? Plus WE need to increase our coalition at the margins and need to make the effort. We can’t afford to be complacent.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: The old Countess of Salisbury (daughter of George Plantagenet) was executed by Henry VIII (she was a 2nd cousin of his and had helped raise him in his youth) and he was in the North at the time with his number 1 axman and she was dealt with by an intern axman and it took 3 or 4 to chop her head off. She also ran around the scaffold and had to be tackled and held down.
iKropoclast
@Will: RACE 👏 WAR 👏 RACE 👏 WAR 👏
European settlers managed to destroy 90 percent of the native population of the Americas. One of their most effective tactics was fostering suspicion between various tribes/city-states.
It’s a tried and true tactic you’re pulling here, Will, you’re doing your job. But we’re too smart for this. Try elsewhere.
Citizen Alan
@Ramalama: I am terrified that the DM for our D&D group voted for Trump. I think it more likely that he didn’t bother to vote at all, but he’s an Elmo groupie who thinks Musk is going to build us Martian colonies so it’s possible. And the guy is gay and in a committed gay relationship. But he also is from a rich family and works for his dad in the financial services industry so he has that “rich or rich-adjacent” mindset. He once said that part of his philosophy is that “Greed is good,” said apparently without any knowledge of who Gordon Gecko was or what he did in that movie or how he got sent to prison in the end.
Everyone else in the gaming group seems reliably liberal except one other guy who is probably too far on the spectrum to have any coherent political views. But the group represents pretty much all the regular friends I’ve made in Fresno and I think it would be impossible for me to game with them if the DM were openly MAGA. And I think he would be uncomfortable having me in his group if he understood the depth of my hatred for the GOP.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kent: No, it didn’t. I recognize it from a long time ago. As Omnes said, MAGA must be getting nervous if they’re trying to stir up shit here. That’s reassuring.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Everyone has a right to an opinion and to express that opinion. A lot of people with a good education do have enough knowledge make make a few general comments on most subjects. Are we going to that everyone needs to post their credenzas before they comment on an issue? I do share a bit of your frustration when a person who truly knows nothing about a topic and posts ever so confidently about it. The latest example I’ve seen is the people who were insisting that Kirk’s killer must have been a highly trained sniper. You will notice that I post very little about particle physics.
Kent
Unlike you, I’m not a New Yorker and I haven’t made up my mind about Mamdani one way or the other. I live on the other side of the country. Although I support young inspirational progressives generally. We need more of them.
What I don’t do is hand-wring about how anyone left of say Amy Klobuchar is “an albatross around our neck”
If Mamdani is talented enough to sweep to victory in NYC he is probably a political talent worthy of being elevated. For God’s sake, look at the Democratic Party alternatives in the state of New York: Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Andrew Cuomo, Hakeem Jeffries, Tom Suozzi, Kathy Hochul, etc. Are they inspiring a new generation of Democrats go come out and fight for progressive ideals?
The right is going to swift boat anyone they can. We already know that. You are making process complaints about the 2024 Democratic primary? Sheesh. Biden was horrible on Gaza back in March 2024 when the NY primary was happening. But Mamdani did support and vote for Harris in the general election. It wasn’t Mamdani that tanked Harris’s chances. There were a lot of reasons why Trump won. Mamdani had nothing to do with any of them.
Kirk
@Baud: This from Pew is the data I keep coming back to.
Yes, white voters leaned more Trump than Harris so obviously race. But I keep coming back to it being a gender thing. And it’s because I compare margins of 2020 to 2024
The margin for men – all men – shifted 10 points toward trump. Whether it’s some men changed party or it’s some men didn’t vote, it’s a change.
The margin for all women was 2 points. Cool.
White men only changed by 3 points. White women? 4 points.
Black men went from leaning 75% for the democratic candidate to leaning 54%. Black women shifted the Republican margin as well going from 90% voting blue to 79% blue.
Hispanics did the same, with men going from 39% R to 50% R. Hispanic women stayed (barely) D, going from 33% to 48%.
For what it’s worth a very similar pattern emerges in 2016 compared to 2012/2020. Turnout was less for the D than it was in the other years, especially among men, and what did turn out voted significantly more Republican — across all genders.
Just some data showing again that while the original sin of our nation is racism, the global original sin is sexism.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Speaking of accusations being confessions, isn’t this what mediocre white people (like those in this maladministration) have been accusing Blacks of being for as long as I can remember?
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: That was a big mistake, but the consensus seemed to be that since the white families had been so torn about the war and so many on opposing sides, that it would be hard or politically impossible for brothers to start executing brothers and so on. Plus, it also seemed that being on a side that advocated for chattel slavery for blacks was just a personal decision, like favouring a specific football offense and let’s just let bygones be bygones…
Melancholy Jaques
@Anyway:
Because the messages are meant for everybody. We Democrats are the party for everybody.
The most common example of what Professor Bigfoot is talking about – if I may be so bold, sir – is the “Democrats have abandoned the working class” argument. How come non-white members of the working class don’t agree? Why do white members of the working class feel abandoned? Why do they feel Republicans offer them anything?
I don’t know you and I don’t want to make assumptions about you or your experience. But I am an ordinary white guy with a very large percentage of white family & friends who did not go to college. They will say things like “Democrats have abandoned us” but when you push them for details, you get to complaints about blacks, immigrants, women, foreigners, and LGBTQ pretty quick. And believe me when I tell you that these people are not that bad off, they are not, as the news likes to say, struggling. They own homes, buy a new car every three years, use Uber eats, amazon comes five times a week. But they have been abandoned!!!
RaflW
@Jeffro: Trump promised to lower the price of eggs and energy. So far he’s only managed to drastically lower the price of cocaine.
Basically, as border guards have been redeployed to arrest migrants, the stopping of cocaine has fallen sharply. And smugglers are responding to shifts away from fentanyl.
iKropoclast
Did someone move to NY and not tell anyone? I’m hurt.
Citizen Alan
@Captain C: I imagine the typical Nazi concentration camp guard didn’t really know the details of the Nuremberg Laws either. The defense is always some variation on “I was just following orders.”
Paul in KY
@p.a.: Yup. Has been a truism in GA politics for darn near 80 years: ‘How go the Asians is how goes Georgia…’.
Kent
I have no idea where Schroedinger’s Cat lives. I assume someone hand-wringing about a local mayoral election must be from there. Otherwise, honestly who cares which Democrat wins?
Eric Adams turned out to be an enormous turd and it meant fuck-all for national politics. Who is the mayor of New York just doesn’t matter much outside of NYC.
p.a.
@Melancholy Jaques: I think Rethugs have proved recently that narrowcasting specific even contradictory messages to individual economic & demographic groups is possible. All lies of course, except the dog whistle and train whistle messages to whites.
Matt McIrvin
@The Thin Black Duke: Is “Reality Check” gonna come back and start gloating about BRINKS. TRUCKS. full of UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH?
JeanneT
@gene108: I’m very late to this, but Harris did meet with Emgage Action, a Muslim civic group with local Michigan chapters, in Flint MI on October 4, 2024: it certainly made the local news outlets. Walz and some of her advisors held virtual events with Michigan Muslim residents. She and Walz also met with some Uncommitted leaders in Detroit in August 2024, and some of her senior officials were in Michigan in August of 2024, meeting with members of the SE Michigan Muslim and Jewish communities.
p.a.
@Kent: But a successful progressive NYC mayor would be a great thing.
Where have you gone Bill DiBlasio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Ooh ooh ooh…
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: A common way it happens elsewhere is that a popular First Lady steps in when the leader dies or is removed for some reason. And I suspect there were both opponents and supporters of Hillary Clinton who still assumed she’d really be a proxy for Bill (no, just no).
Citizen Alan
@laura: TBF, Mamdani declining to immediately support Hochul over Antonio Delgado in what is likely to be a tough gubernatorial primary is probably not an example of DSA fuckery so much as pragmatism. Assuming Mamdami wins, I’ll wager he makes an endorsement of one of the two after his inauguration.
Kent
@JeanneT: The electorate in 2024 shifted measurably red in virtually every state in the country. In fact, less so in most swing states compared to other places.
This is why Trump won. Not because Harris campaigned or didn’t campaign in some county in MI or South TX: nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/presidential-election-2024-red-shift.html
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: My credenza is leather, I’ll have you know :-)
Melancholy Jaques
@Kirk:
I keep saying that and I keep being told it was eggs, housing, gas, etc.
By the way, eggs yesterday $12 for 18. Is that better than before? I don’t normally buy eggs, so I don’t know.
iKropoclast
@Kent: NY is the center of a lot of national media and they’re mayoral elections do tend to spark interest outside of NY.
Also, many people have ideological interests and have no problem trying to advance them at every opportunity. The mayor of NY is being discussed? That’s the current opportunity to discuss your beliefs.
This isn’t exclusive to NY. Candidates everywhere get donations from big and small donors everywhere. And I don’t necessarily see a problem with it. But I would hope the actual locals witnessing these conversations recognize that outside participants are mainly acting on ideological priors and may know very little about the nuances of the race, then act accordingly.
Geminid
@p.a.: Lt. Governor Anthony Delgado is running against Kathy Hochul. He announced in June.
Citizen Alan
@laura: I remain convinced that the DSA is funded on the down-low by oligarchs (both foreign and domestic) for the twin purposes of (1) undermining the Democratic Party and (2) making socialism look ridiculous in the eyes of casual voters who are oblivious to how much socialism they depend on already.
iKropoclast
@p.a.: Trump to Muslims: the gays are coming for your religious freedoms.
Trump to the gays: Muslims are coming after your freedom to love who you want.
Both available right next to each other on the 2016 campaign website.
That kind of thing?
Id pity those who fell for it if it weren’t all so transparent.
Kent
Of course it would be a good thing in NYC. And more power to New Yorkers if they elect one.
It would have no effect here in Southwest Washington. The identity of the NYC mayor has about as much impact here in my corner of the world as the identity of the mayor of Paris or London.
Paul in KY
@Kent: A great Democratic mayor of New York can be a big plus for us.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: LOL! Bill was more a proxy for her than she’d have ever been a proxy for him.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: They’d be demonizing Venezuelan immigrants in one market, and telling those same immigrants to vote for Trump to save America from Communism in another.
Kent
Hey, I’m mainly quibbling here with Schroedinger’s Cat’s assertion that Mamdani would be an albatross around Democrat’s necks.
I think electing a progressive mayor in NYC would be a good thing. But not nearly as consequential nationally as people think. And I also don’t think a lone mayor in NYC has all that much power to do much on their own anyway.
prostratedragon
@Paul in KY: I really have doubts about people sometimes.
iKropoclast
@Kent: I figured. Though I understand well the mindset that would encourage others to opine on elections they aren’t able to participate in. I thought I could at least help in that regard.
Citizen Alan
@Kent: Cynical of me, I know, but I don’t think a truly progressive Mayor for NYC could ever be successful simply because a truly progressive Mayor could not help but have an antagonistic relationship with the legalized criminal enterprise called the NYPD.
iKropoclast
@Citizen Alan: No hope, then, that the NYPD finally overplays its hand, undermines itself, and is finally subject to the reform effort it so richly deserves?
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
True but misleading, as this uses the Census Bureau’s definition of Hispanics as being a separate ethnicity rather than race; IOW there are white Hispanics, Black Hispanics, and Hispanics of other races. Wikipedia:
Bolding mine.
I’ve been commenting on this for years. I don’t know why you pick on white women while virtually ignoring white men who vote R at much higher rates than white women do.
It’s as if you think of them as two unrelated ethnic groups rather than people who live among each other, frequently even sharing the same residences!
And we still live in an environment where women are much more likely to (often unconsciously) adopt the political opinions of the men in their lives than the reverse. You seem to expect white women to vote majority Dem when the men they live with are voting something like 65% GOP. You give no credit to white women for voting as near to 50-50 as they do under those circumstances, while giving white men a pass on being close to 2/3 Republican. I guess you just regard white men as a force of nature: nothing to be done about them.
Professor Bigfoot
@Will: Who is “we,” white guy?
Professor Bigfoot
@Anyway: No, one size doesn’t fit all.
But I haven’t heard any message that resonates with white people that doesn’t toss some marginalized community under the bus.
So I say, show me the messaging that works on white people.
Ruckus
@Citizen Alan:
voters get over their misogyny.
This world has looked at women as less than for eons. It is of course pure bullshit. But it is deeply seated bullshit and it will take who knows what to change it. Sure a lot of people will accept it – on both sides of the humanity aisle. But a lot of people is not close to a majority. When I’ve run into men acting like they own the world I ask them, would they give birth to their children. About half of them will look at you like the world just exploded.
We, as in the human race, need to do better. This world is not like it was even half a century ago. A lot has changed in the lifetime of many alive today. And it needs to. We have to understand that, the what, the how and the why because this is one of those points of time that will stay with humanity for a long time. And we have to respect the change and the need for the change. And that it is overdue. What I have seen in my 3/4 of a century is a world that is not the same as it was and the change is for an extremely valid reason. Humanity adapts to the world it lives in. It HAS to or it won’t continue to exist. And the world and humanity, is very rightfully changing, as it has whenever we learn what it REALLY IS. This concept of equality is vital to our moving forward. And it should have a long time ago. But then it is humanity, stubborn, selfish, individually orientated, with many thinking they live above others. Given the population, the communications, science, we have to grow. We have to look forward and understand that the world around us isn’t the world of 50 or more years ago. The openness, the communication, the knowledge is far different than in the lifetime of many still alive today. And it will not revert to what it was, unless we destroy much of it. And that is insane and senseless. The world and humanity has changed a lot in the last few hundred years. Hell in the lifetime of many breathing today. I am over 3/4 of a century old and the changes in my lifetime are immense. And many of those changes are far better. FAR, FAR BETTER. What I’ve seen is a concept of life that is radically different from what it was. It’s still life, it’s still humanity and it hasn’t all been positive, but then it’s humanity and selfishness is a real thing, along with that concept of survival. But the changes are significant, and in the vast majority far better in the short and long term.
prostratedragon
@Citizen Alan: In his position I’d probably note that this far out we don’t know if I’d be doing her any good.
Kent
Hey, I’m in favor of electing good progressives everywhere and anywhere as long as they aren’t profoundly stupid knee-jerk leftists like Kshama Sawant in Seattle. And Mamdani doesn’t strike me as that at all. He seems highly pragmatic and results-oriented.
I also don’t think local politicians in blue cities are going to make much if any difference nationally when it comes to control over the White House, Senate, House, or SCOTUS. No matter how good they are, the average swing voter in say GA or AZ isn’t going to care or even know who they are. If he is successful then it will be good for NYC for sure. But isn’t going to tip the balance of power in Congress.
I hope Mamdani succeeds and does better than say Brandon Johnson in Chicago who had a lot of the same lefty support back in 2023. Governing a big city is very hard.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: He was a vindictive, narcissistic drama queen. His reign (and Mary’s afterwards) did push Parliament to start reigning in the powers that a king/queen could exercise when it came to arbitrarily killing/murdering political opponents/people who you disagree with or who piss you off.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
Thanks for the link.
Also worth noting that ICE has agency; they implemented the raid, and they chose to do a mass arrest of South Koreans.
And that ICE has a chain of command that goes up to Mr. Trump (POTUS), and that it is widely suspected in Korea that Mr. Trump was involved.
Kent
@Citizen Alan: I agree. The mayor doesn’t really control the NYPD. Nor does he control the MTA or even the schools except very indirectly. If Mamdani wins he will have a short honeymoon….very short. And then we’ll be back to the same endless gridlock that ossifies every big city in this country. And if he isn’t actively bad like Adams that will be a win.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Truth.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yeah, I still have Will pied from days gone by. Toggled one of his posts, and it was obvious why I’d done so.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY: For more than two wives he had no male heir, the Tudor claim to the throne was legally shaky, and of course he was a rather vicious despot, so killing off Yorkist made complete sense.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: I think it’s more the same incredulity that I have at Black Trump supporters, except it’s been over 50% of white women who voted Trump/GOP the last three major cycles.
Like, “ladies, you’re shooting yourselves and your daughters!”
It’s frankly rational for white men to be pro Trump; they’re the ones the rest of us need our rights defended FROM.
iKropoclast
But the activists do. Some will be if the view that a successful ideological ally anywhere is a good advertisement, proof of concept for some version of their views anywhere. Inversely, ideological opponents will view their success as a threat and their warnings that were always going to be the same to be prescient if that person wins then performs poorly.
It’s stuff around margins, but primaries tend to be low turnout among the most engaged voters. It matters at least a little.
Captain C
@Kent:
Mamdani ran the primary as a proud Democrat whose central message was “Hey, NYC is great already, but we can make it even better!”* If he can figure out the levers of power (which Brad Lander can help him with), he could do some very cool things here.
*Cuomo’s was “This city sucks and you all suck! Vote for me!” and Adams’ message seems to still be “A leprechaun in every pot!” Sliwa’s seems to be “Hey, I’m having a great time talking shit!”
prostratedragon
@Paul in KY: I’d known the outline of his story, but watching Wolf Hall earlier this year made it all so fresh, as if it were happening now.
Marc
The same messaging that worked for the entirety of this colony/nation’s existence except for a period of 60 years or so: convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man
Karen Gail
@Ruckus:
I am about as old as you; some things have gotten better but in so many places in the world, not just this country, things have gotten worse not better for women. I had such high hopes when I could get my own credit card, birth control without male permission and was able to safely report being raped. Now I see a world where my granddaughters are facing loss of their rights. I see a world where women have become slaves to males; I see a world where rape is celebrated as “boys being boys.”
There are days when I wish we could burn down the world and start over with about one million people worldwide; not often but it happens when I see and hear how a woman is willing to give up her rights to white supremacy.
tam1MI
@iKropoclast: From a quick search on Google:
Key details about Harris’s meetings with Muslim leaders in Michigan:
iKropoclast
On reflection, maybe I’m not white. Maybe I’m pink.
Geminid
@Kent: There’s as much or more riding on the New Jersey and Virginia governor races as there there is on New York’s mayoral race. And Mikie Sherrill is as capable and talented a politician as Zohran Mamdani, and so is Abigail Spanberger.
The three jurisdictions are comparable in population with New York being smallest at •8.4 million, Virginia ~8.7 and New Jersey ~9.5 million.
New City is in fact a major media center, so that’s a reason Mamdani gets more coverage. But this endorsement controversy drives a lot of the attention.
But Assemblyman Mamdani did not endorse Kamala Harris in last year’s general election, and that is something the people hollering for Democratic politicians to endorse Mamdani conveniently do not mention.
iKropoclast
@tam1MI: Someone sent me an article on those meetings. Those were closed door meetings and the article the other individual provided did not include any statements by the participants of how they went. (ETA: If you’ve found something with more information in that regard, please share. I would love better info than I currently have on how those meetings transpired. )
Did she have any prominent speakers on Palestinian or other Middle East concerns at her campaign events? Did she have anything to say on the debate besides the typical sounds neutral but really supporting the pro-Israel status quo boilerplate?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I saw a couple of other trollish nyms I haven’t seen in a long time popping up recently. Sometimes revealing that I cleared out the old pie filter at some point.
Ishiyama
He voted for her. He did not, as far as I can learn, refuse to endorse her – if he was even asked. We had a term for this sort of argument, but it isn’t polite.
Marc
@tam1MI: This is great assuming the Muslim leaders actually liked the message they were hearing, but what if they didn’t? The other interesting thing I’ve amused myself with is looking at the actual numbers in the electoral district that the Muslim voters allegedly flipped. My reading of the numbers says that if every Muslim voter voted the same way they did in 2020, or just stayed home, the district would still have flipped due to the overwhelming shift in white voters.
My attitude is that blaming these things on other demographics is a progressive form of white supremacy (as in: we know how those people should vote), but people don’t like it when I say that.
iKropoclast
If you don’t have a national political profile, that’s the endorsement that matters
Geminid
@Kent: Republicans sure think they can use Mamdani against Democrats nationwide, but I think that’s wishful thinking. Like you say, Mamdani seems to be pragmatist who wants to be a successful mayor.
That could be a reason why he’s not raising a fuss about the New York politicians who have not endorsed him, while penty of other people can’t stop talking about it. But Mamdani wants to succeed as Mayor, and letting his candidacy be weaponized to settle intra-party grudges does not contribute to that one bit.
Another Scott
@Kent: +1
As we saw with DeBlasio and Cuomo, the Governor has a lot of power in NYC. Mandami isn’t going to get too far in front of Hochul if he doesn’t want to get slapped down.
I think he understands the dynamics there pretty well, but we’ll see.
Best wishes,
Scott.
iKropoclast
A little paternalistic too. Don’t they know what we are doing for them?!?!?
That’s before you get into the respectability politics that make it difficult for non cis-het-white-male candidates to advance to leadership positions in the party unless they sign onto the priorities and means of expression enforced by their white male predecessors.
Marc
@Geminid: Also a case of getting to know him based upon who is apparently shunning him. That’s what caused me to first notice Mamdani.
Marc
The paternalism comes as part of the white supremacy.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: I can understand him thinking he needed a male heir above all and then doing what he had to do to try and get one. The nasty part of him was the trumping up the charges and then executing 2 women for stuff that should have just got them divorced and shipped off to a convent. Similarly, Margaret Pole should just have been put into a cell in the Tower (at most) till she expired.
Geminid
@Ishiyama: Yes, after the election Mamdani said he voted for Harris, on the Working Familes Party ballot line. But he could have endorsed Harris and did not.
I’m not criticizing Mamdani for that. I’m criticizing the people who rip Democrats for not endorsing Mamdani, who do not acknowledge his non-endorsement of Harris. There’s a double standard here.
Marc
@Geminid: Nobody outside of NYC had any idea who Mamdani was prior to 11/24. And there is always the weird possibility that he didn’t really like some aspect of her messaging, but we now know non-whites are not allowed that form of agency.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: Wolf Hall is a great trio of books that was done very well in the TV series. The real Thomas Cromwell would be flattered (I think) by Mr. Rylance’s portrayal of him.
Geminid
@Marc: I think the role of Michigan’s Muslim Americans in Harris’s defeat is much exaggerated. Personally, I think they’re being scapegoated and I’ve said as much here.
iKropoclast
@Geminid: In my mind, when one group has a standard it tries to apply among itself and it wants to bring in another smaller group to join them under that standard, it’s the responsibility of the larger group pushing that standard to extend the olive branch.
I’m not so concerned with the adversarial relationship between Dems and DSA in years past as I am with if they start cooperating more, can it be done in a mutualistic way
Something something, well worn axiom made famous by a New York character about power conferring responsibility.
Anyway
Above my pay grade, boss! Srsly wish I knew …
iKropoclast
A blanched chicken in every pot!
Heidi Mom
@Paul in KY: I remember watching a scene of Henry carrying his little red-haired daughter around and thinking “If you only knew ….”
Geminid
@iKropoclast: The DSA has less than 90,000 members nationwide. Almost a tenth of them are in the New York City chapter. That’s the only place in the U.S. where tbey are a significant political factor.
They’re an interesting bunch though. You’ll see how if you read this article about their national convention last month. It’s written by two DSA members for International Viewpoint and titled:
internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article9126
iKropoclast
@Geminid: Read it last time you posted but I’ll review. It was an interesting read.
And I reasonably suspect that this race in NY is exactly the sort of opportunity they need to grow their membership.
Citizen Alan
While true, I think it’s different here in America. Nearly every Western industrialized nation has head of state. If you asked any random American to name the most consequential British Prime Minister in history, I think the majority who could give any answer at all would pick Thatcher. I know she would be the answer for most conservatives. But here in America, misogyny is so ingrained (because, IMO, the outsized political influence of the evangelicals) that a woman president is an deal-breaker for at least 45% of the country.
iKropoclast
@Citizen Alan: Female heads of state have raised the stature of nations across the world
ETA: And if I were talking UK, I’d definitely rather point to Queen Elizabeth I.
Ruckus
@Kirk:
Just some data showing again that while the original sin of our nation is racism, the global original sin is sexism.
Sexism and racism are human issues pretty much everywhere. In a rational world they wouldn’t be. But most humans are less than fully rational, because survival is a part of living beings. And yes there are times that most living beings will risk everything for others. Some do it as a job. Sure they likely don’t want to die and will take risks, but many won’t take nearly as much as others will. Life used to be far more risky and physical. We now have constant hot running water, 24 hr electricity, garbage disposals, refrigerators, gas or electric stoves, reasonably safe cars, a retirement fund (SS), color TV, a bizllon radio stations, internet, far better public transportation and on and on. I’m listening to music on my computer while typing this. A world wide phone fits in a pocket. Medicine is far, far better. Now if everyone could get regular medical care as needed that would be an improvement.
Life is quite a bit different than when I was growing up than it is while growing old. Is it better? HELL YES.
Bill Arnold
@RaflW:
Also, there are no tariffs paid on smuggled cocaine.
Coffee is much more expensive, due to tariffs. :-(
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: Thatcher was not a head of state. That being said, the British head of state at the time was a woman.
Anyway
@Ishiyama: Did people pay attention to the endorsements of every assemblyman in NY in Oct/Nov 2024? Did we care about the endorsements of random assemblycritters…
tam1MI
@iKropoclast:
@Marc:
I was responding to the allegation that Harris didn’t meet with them at all, which is untrue.
I’ll have to dig back through some threads where the topic of “Did Muslim voters cost Harris Michigan” came up before for the links I shared, but the short answer to that is, “No, they didn’t”.
Geminid
@iKropoclast: Oh yeah, the DSA’s New York chapter saw a large infux of new members after Zohran Mamdani’s primary win. Although, if their National Political Committee members were to apply the newly adopted “Anti-Zionism” policy strictly, they could throw Mamdani out of the party, and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez with him.
They won’t, but that’s an example of the internal stresses the organization has to deal with. As the article’s authors say, the DSA moved Left last month. But Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez have if anything moved towards the Center.
iKropoclast
What I actually said was “couldn’t be seen with.” A closed door meeting don’t fix that.
tam1MI
True, but if the intent is to listen to their concerns, a closed door meeting makes sense.
iKropoclast
They won’t, but that’s an example of the internal stresses the organization has to deal with. As the article’s authors say, the DSA moved Left last month. But Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez have if anything moved towards the Center.
Yes and I truly don’t have a problem with this on the part of DSA or Mamdani/AOC. A party can have an ideal, but that is never going to extrapolate to each individual member. Internal party mechanisms like voting and conventions are what will police the boundaries of how far one can stray.
This is fine. Now if the party started excluding people for straying too far away from this or that ideal, I’d have to start assessing the party’s ideal as well as what the candidate wanted. That evaluation will affect my overall opinion of the party.
I assume everyone is fine with that as long as we’re talking DSA, right?
iKropoclast
True. But if the intent is to be recognized as listening, it makes less sense. Less still when the only person we heard from after was Harris and the statement was some bland pablum that thousands of Democrats before her have had ready to copy and paste into any given speech.
Citizen Alan
@Paul in KY: After seeing a production of Six and thinking that Catherine of Aragon’s song was the best, I was suddenly struck by the thought of how much history would have changed had Catherine delivered a healthy male heir in place of Mary. The Church of England might never have come into existence, likely with significant impact on the Protestant Reformation. No Troubles in Ireland (or at least not a conflict driven by religious differences).
Geminid
@Anyway: I got this particular sub-debate rolling at #327. But the only reason I mentioned Mamdani’s non-endorsement of Harris is all the people griping about Democrats’ non-endorsement of Mamdani. They are applying a double standard.
It’s up to New York City voters to decide if they care about Mamdani’s non-endorsement. But the agitation over non-endorsements of Mamdani is nationwide, and that’s why I brought this up.
Geminid
@iKropoclast: Well, we are talking about the DSA. That is a membership party and the Democratic Party is not.
iKropoclast
@Geminid: Then it speaks well to the DSA that despite being a membership party, they give elected officials among them latitude to exercise their own judgment.
cain
@p.a:
To them they are not paying attention to social media, they are policy people. They are disconnected from that. All GOP are connected to social media because they don’t actually do any work.
sab
@Melancholy Jaques: Yikes! My 18 eggs in Ohio were $4.99 tjis morning. Ours are local. Are yours imported?
cain
@gene108:
True, but now those people’s reputation is shot given ICE actions.
Deputinize America
@iKropoclast:
DSA can suck my ass.
During the earliest parts of the first Trump Administration Muslim ban, I tried to organize a demonstration at Mitch McConnell’s church on a weekday, to be held in the gigantic Park and Ride lot they’d leased to the city. I’d recruited about 20 people surreptitiously, and my youngest daughter suggested that I reach out to the DSA for more bodies (she’d been under some assumptions regarding their usefulness from her pro-Bernie actions in 2016). DSA promised to have people there.
My people showed, but no DSA people appeared – we were instead met by more cop cars and paddy wagons than we had protestors, and were kettled off to a remote corner, zero coverage.
The whole thing was a fizzle, and DSA organizers dropped the dime on us. Don’t EVER pretend that they’re more than a fucking useless set of big talking white boys
ETA: Daughter abandoned DSA in her city as well. She said they were unreliable and lazy.
iKropoclast
You got proof or is that just a post hoc ergo propter hoc conclusion?
Sorry, working hard to think of a single one of their elected members who is a white man. Mamdani, AOC, and Tlaib are the people I know best for their association with the DSA, not one a white man.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan: Catherine did produce a male heir with Henry, if I recall my history correctly. He was born healthy, but alas – died as an infant.
Or think how differently history might have played out if Anne Boleyn had managed to deliver *her* male baby that was stillborn. At the very least, history might have played out differently for *her*.
Deputinize America
@iKropoclast:
My people all showed, and the communication was in secret, by text message and DMs. The ones who didn’t show were the DSA brats, and it was an impossibility that any of my handpicked people would have done that.
I was promised at least 20-30 DSA bodies, all of whom stayed home. Clearly, there was coordination between LMPD, the JCSO and DSA for NONE of them to show up, and only cops to show.
Timill
@sab: $4.29 for Kroger® Grade A Large White Eggs 18 ct here in Tennessee and
$6.49 for Simple Truth™ Natural Cage Free Grade A Large Brown Eggs 18 ct
Geminid
@iKropoclast: The DSA has allowed Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani latitude so far. But a lot of DSA members diagree with the policy of running members on the Democratic line.. They argue that it’s a trap, or at best a cul-de-sac. These members and their respective caucuses could push the National Political Committee to tighten the reins on their office holders.
Or at least withold endorsements; that happened last year, when the New York chapter endorsed Ocasio-Cortez but the national organization would not because she did not take the correct line in the Gaza war.
iKropoclast
I can understand why they might think that. They worry that they might be relegated to a permanent support role where they issue an endorsement and it may have some sway, but in the end all they’d be doing is influencing D primaries. That’s a legitimate worry. It would be a growth of their current influence, but an absolute limit on further growth.
It’s a difficult question and various chapters will have to come to their own solutions based on the rules and partisan cultures in the states they’re in. I’m not signed up with either party, but it appears to me that both are better off cooperating.
iKropoclast
@Deputinize America: That’s circumstantial and kinda thin. I’m not saying your wrong. I can understand how you became convinced of your conclusion. I’m not, but I promise to bear what you said in mind.
Paul in KY
@Heidi Mom: A Queen who’ll be 5 times the ruler you were!
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: No reformation probably. Maybe the House of Tudor goes on for another 200 years. One of Henry’s minions said that Henry himself was fine with Catholicism, he just refused to be under the pope’s control in any concrete manner.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: I felt sorry for Cardinal Wolsey (sort of). He was tasked with an impossible job, as the pope was under the Holy Roman Emperor’s thumb and that guy was Catherine’s nephew. There was no freaking way the pope was going to rule that 20+ year marriage void.
After reading up on this stuff, I think they never made Catherine ‘an offer she couldn’t refuse’ to voluntarily agree to divorce (as Eleanor of Aquitaine did 100s of years before to the French King she had married). It appears Catherine knew who she was being replaced with and that contributed to her ‘never!!’ stance.
Paul in KY
@Deputinize America: Sure appears that way.
burritoboy
For my many, many sins, I’ve been …….let’s just say involved with DSA for many years and on many levels.
It is not really one organization (occasionally it wants to pretend to be…..but that’s largely in a few people’s imagination.) Essentially, the 200+ chapters can do nearly anything they want. There’s a thin layer of a few national bodies (that have very limited capacity to make anyone do anything,) and a handful of staffers in the national organization. These things aren’t that important in the end.
New York DSA – as any major chapter of DSA does – basically does whatever it wants. (And I wouldn’t have it any other way.) It does not have the greatest relationship with the DSA National Political Committee, which is (somewhat) controlled by……well, some of them sometimes call themselves Maoists, some of them call themselves “revolutionary Marxists” and some of them call themselves any variety of other things. In essence, while each of this later group is an individual, they overall oppose electoral politics (in some broad sense, anyway.) But New York DSA doesn’t care that much about their opinions, nor frankly, should it.
Basically, yes, it’s a fairly unreliable and loosey – goosey org that has your typical wide mix of people and opportunists, as well as weirdos and a handful of idiots or dangerous people. (There is also the large layer of goof-offs or lazy people, not surprisingly.) There’s usually very little sense in talking about it as if it was any sort of very coherent or unified single organization.
The endorsees basically are all endorsed at the chapter level, and the National level almost never endorses anyone – partially because the National Political Committee has the composition that it now has (against elections, effectively), but mostly because national endorsements are essentially irrelevant anyway and always were. (The National level can’t really help candidates with money or even volunteers that they couldn’t get already from their local chapters.) Candidates generally don’t feel the need for a national endorsement, and very few ask for it.
burritoboy
“Then it speaks well to the DSA that despite being a membership party, they give elected officials among them latitude to exercise their own judgment.”
DSA is not a political party at all. It is a membership organization that encourages socialism. There is always discussion within it about becoming a political party (in some future, which might be distant or near, depending on how much the kool-aid the individual has drunk)…..which discussions I think are mostly wastes of time.
Kayla Rudbek
@Captain C: sports gambling would be a natural match
Kayla Rudbek
@Citizen Alan: there’s a business model in predicting how hard an individual patent examiner is as compared with the rest of their art unit/group/technology center/the Patent Office overall (Patent Bots being one of them); I’m sure that someone could build a similar predictive model for judges. No need for it at the Supreme Court level because the Seditious Six will always favor Trump.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kirk: I would totally agree that sexism is one of the deepest rooted problems that humans have. I think that racism as we know it in the West goes back to at least the Renaissance, but recorded sexism goes back to at least the ancient Greeks/Hindus/Chinese/etc (basically once agriculture got established and women weren’t out hunting anymore).